Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Japan's Hometown Tax

kalzumeus.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 260 posts

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#241

Post by coldtea »

enedil wrote: post #237
coldtea wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat, since they include ancient Greek and old-time islamic ancestry (as far as I know). According to Wikipedia: "There is a noticeable genetic difference between Sardinians, Northern Italians and Southern Italians. People from the North seem to be close to the French population, while those from the South overlap with Balkan and other southern European populations". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_…

It's not modern use of racism. If you think so, all you do is you're praising ignorance.

Actually it's the "racism must involve some tangible race" that's ignorance and a-historical. Etymology and definition doesn't define how words are actually used, one needs historical and empirical research for that.

Race is not about genetics. It's a cultural construct, which is predominantly based on historical and ethnological differences (with the inevitable, but not critical mix of genetics that comes with the latter), and has little to do with actual "races".

People from Italy and the Balkans for example where perceived as "non white" when immigrating to the US, while being caucasian. They just weren't anglosaxon, germanic, or nordic, as the dominant WASP Americans of the time. There are is lots of historical and cultural studies on this [1].

WASP Americans badmouthing Greeks or Italians were racist, even if talking about people the same race.

And it's a similar cases between Northern and Southern Italians (there are cultural, historical and ethnological differences between the two areas). The racism of north vs south comes from that -- and it even fed into actual far right / neo-fascist parties, like the Lega Nord ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lega_Nord ).

Whether Southern italians are indeed "less productive" is beside the point too. Blacks in the US are also poorer and less 'productive', more likely to be convicted felons (statistically), etc, but people still consider someone badmouthing blacks to have racist motives.

[1] The immigrants from the southern part of Italy and Sicily were not considered wholly white by Anglo-Saxon standards, a notion which was reinforced by the US Immigration Department classification of northern and southern Italians as two distinct caucasian ethnic groups. In reaction to the large-scale immigration from southern and eastern Europe, Congress passed legislation (Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and Immigration Act of 1924) restricting immigration from those regions, but not from Northern European countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Italianism#Anti-Italianis...

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#242

Post by coldtea »

southphillyman wrote: post #183
googlryas wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not technically but if you had 1000 naked northern and southern Italians in a room you could probably achieve an 85+% success rate in segmenting them into their respective class. Northern Italians generally look much more like Germans or Swiss - on average taller, lighter skin, lighter eye color, whereas southern Italians are much swarthier and slightly shorter, coming from many years of arab, greek, and north africa…

Perhaps this explains why Italian Americans don't really look like the Italians I see on Italian television shows? Seems most of them migrated from southern Italy/Sicily.

>Seems most of them migrated from southern Italy/Sicily.

Yes, since they were the poorest provinces, and thus the ones that produced most immigrants.

A "fun" read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Italianism#Anti-Italianis...

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#243

Post by mmirate »

int_19h wrote: post #218
mmirate wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace "Oregon" by "New Hampshire", and you can say the words with pride instead of sarcasm.

Still going to be sarcasm, sorry. How many of those who pledged to move have actually moved?

Sorry, I don't have those numbers on-hand.

What I do have on-hand is that NH has a higher median income than any other nation in the world (incl Luxembourg), despite being a net-payer of federal taxes.

(Source: https://mises.org/wire/if-sweden-and-germany-became-us-state...)

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#244

Post by rtpg »

jfroma wrote: post #82
megaman2 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but there's absolutely zero reason to allow the return gifts in the first place There are reasons, but just ones that you don't agree with or haven't thought of. You need to understand that reciprocation is in the culture, and people are not purely rational economic actors. It's entirely possible some towns would outright refuse 'assistance' without being able to reciprocate somehow.

Isn't the person donating to their hometown the tax, giving something to the town (reciprocation) for the education and childhood they had in the hometown in the first place? Where does the reciprocation ends? You give money to your hometown because you have very found memories and you feel grateful about the education etc., your hometown sends you plums, you send a pie to thank the plums, then they respond back with…

I mean there's the stereotype of the "thank you" note for the birthday gifts. You bring a gift to someone hosting a dinner party at their house.

There's of course a cynical tax play here. But it is entirely possible that people also _feel good for helping their hometowns_. Sure, there's the vouchers, but there are also the (not super resellable) plums!

It's maintaining emotional bonds in the community. At least that's the most optimistic way of thinking about it

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#245

Post by dang »

mann1x wrote: post #234
pgz wrote: post #2

I always found this system very interesting, since the citizen can decide how some of their tax money is spent (besides voting). On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy, mostly to be squandered by corruption, clientelism, and organized crime.

Amazingly you keep living under your dome of ignorance, blind to the obvious, spreading lies around. Your half taxes are stolen by criminals all around Italy, most of them are your neighbors in the North. Going around on a Ferrari, wearing Rolex and spending hundreds of Euro for an aperitivo. Your money too. That money it's routed to the South and mostly goes back to "hard working" companies from the North. In inflat…

This post breaks the HN guidelines. Personal attacks, as well as political and national (or whatever this) flamewar, will get you banned here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this to HN.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#246

Post by _bfhp »

ubernostrum wrote: post #230
karmelapple wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could set minimum amounts to go to schools so that even if every single person in the country allocated $0 of their discretionary fund to public education, the public education system would still have the funds needed. And the default, if someone doesn't choose any categories, would go to some proportion that Congress would decide. However, allowing even a "small" portion - which could still be billions of dollars…

We could set minimum amounts to go to schools I lived for quite a while in Kansas, where the state constitution makes adequate funding of schools mandatory . The result is a never-ending series of lawsuits in which the legislature claims to have provided adequate funding, and a court finds that they haven't and orders them to increase or redistribute the funding (sometimes it's found that they under-funded the school…

Looking into this it looks like the Koch brothers just... installed this guy with millions in PAC money? Sounds like a campaign finance reform issue?

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#247

Post by int_19h »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #236
int_19h wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim isn't that it doesn't work, but that the overhead is substantial, and those same goals could be reached with far less. I think it's self-evident from the description of the scheme - you could come up with a much more straightforward tax-and-redistribute scheme with less overhead.

But the overhead, as noted in the OP, is about 3% of the money transfer. That's low. You could say that hometown marketing and alumni magazines are "overhead", but you can't say that at the same time you're listing them as a beneficial effect of the program.

That's the overhead of cashing the gift cards only.

And those other things are not overhead if and only if the person actually derives value from "hometown services". If all they do is send money there to get a gift card back and cash it, then all the bureaucracy in that town that handles gift cards is also overhead.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#248

Post by int_19h »

mmirate wrote: post #243
int_19h wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still going to be sarcasm, sorry. How many of those who pledged to move have actually moved?

Sorry, I don't have those numbers on-hand. What I do have on-hand is that NH has a higher median income than any other nation in the world (incl Luxembourg), despite being a net-payer of federal taxes. (Source: https://mises.org/wire/if-sweden-and-germany-became-us-state... )

I seriously doubt it has anything to do with the FSP.

Of course, the median income metric is not the end-all be-all, either. For example, it ignores all the state-provided benefits that those high taxes pay for.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#249

Post by danso »

mmirate wrote: post #243
int_19h wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still going to be sarcasm, sorry. How many of those who pledged to move have actually moved?

Sorry, I don't have those numbers on-hand. What I do have on-hand is that NH has a higher median income than any other nation in the world (incl Luxembourg), despite being a net-payer of federal taxes. (Source: https://mises.org/wire/if-sweden-and-germany-became-us-state... )

It's true that NH has traditionally been in the top-tier of states when it comes to median household income. In the 2016 ACS, it appears to have reached the top:

https://www.pressherald.com/2017/09/13/the-state-with-highes...

But its lead is not an overwhelming one. Connecticut's 2016 median hh income was just ~$350 less. According to the the previous ACS in 2015, NH was number 8. And 6 of the top 7 were traditionally blue states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

- 1. Maryland

- 2. DC

- 3. Hawaii

- 4. Alaska

- 5. New Jersey

- 6. Connecticut

- 7. Massachusetts

Post reply on HN